R.I.P Usenet: 1980-2008 - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a%253D230383,00.asp

<comment><USER2> _Beware the Four Horsemen of the Information Apocalypse: terrorists, drug dealers, kidnappers, and child pornographers. Seems like you can scare any public into allowing the government to do anything with those four._ </quote> [http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/computer_crime...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/computer_crime_1.html)

The Usenet is nod dead, nonetheless I find that the quote might be relevant.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone that really uses Usenet these days really care if their ISP carries it? It looks to me like the major Usenet-only ISPs are doing just fine. The system is far from dead, for now.

<comment><USER4> Getting free Usenet is noticeably better than paying for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "It's hard to completely kill off something as totally decentralized as Usenet; as long as two servers agree to share the NNTP protocol, it'll continue on in some fashion."

So... dead to the author, but not everyone.

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't the title of these submissions legally required to be "Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!"?

</comment><comment><USER7> It was too expensive to use...

"This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing.

Are you absolutely sure you want to do this? [ny]_

<comment><USER8> So basically like email?

<comment><USER9> Exactly. It takes 1 minute to write an email and 1 minute to read one, but when it's sent to 5,000 people in your address book. That's over 10 work days wasted just reading it.</comment></comment></comment>


Brain-Destroying Prions Also Spread Through Victims' Eyes - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/brain-destroying-prions-also-spread-through-victims-eye-1830545293 <comment><USER2> Prions are truly scary, this article [0] from earlier this year is a bit more in-depth and links to many other interesting sources of information. One thing that particularly concerns me for the future is a potential plague or weaponisation. Prions can be transferred through vectors such as the digestive system [1] and even via air [2].

[0] [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/prions- ar...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/prions-are-forever/)

[1] [http://www.scielo.br/pdf/cta/v34n3/01.pdf](http://www.scielo.br/pdf/cta/v34n3/01.pdf)

[2] [https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...](https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1001257)

<comment> xkcd-sucks Haha and if airborne prions have been deployed at scale in the recent past, nobody will even start to feel sick for years, and realizing it was a large scale attack will take decades + a team of epidemiologists

Plus, it's like the only biologic easier than beer to manufacture, you just feed some animals to some other animals, wait a while and harvest. No clean rooms, no expensive lab equipment, nothing that looks out of the ordinary

I do wonder if anyone is optimizing the structures for bioweapon use though

Also an interesting crossover with aSyn aggregates in the gut being predictive of parkinsons/dementia, hmm

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Even scarier, look at the denaturing temperature of a prion like mad cow disease. Normal coming temperatures or boiling water wont do anything.

[http://certoclav.com/en/support/knowledge/show/autoclaving-p...](http://certoclav.com/en/support/knowledge/show/autoclaving- prions.htm)

Cliff notes: 270 Degrees Celsius for 90m. And under certain conditions the leftover particles can renature themselves.

<comment><USER4> 270c, 518f. Cook anything at that temp for 90m and you've got charcoal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fascinating although deadly... prions persist through fire, radiation, and other sterilization methods. Yikes!

<comment><USER6> Prions aren't even living. Prions don't do what they do to survive. It isn't like cancer which is somehow, very ironically, trying to survive. They are a simple mistake, a ghost in the machine of the programming of life. That somehow makes prions the scariest thing there is to me: the lack of a reason.

<comment><USER7> >the lack of a reason

then be scared of life itself

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And on today's episode of Why Nature Is Horrifying...

<comment><USER9> and tune in to 'history' channel to see how nazi ufo vampires invented the pyramids</comment></comment>


The Turn (1993) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/langew/turn.htm?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> Previously on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5154795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5154795)

<comment><USER3> Ha, it must be Aviation Week again here on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5157182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5157182)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Re-post here, true, but this is one of my favorite Atlantic articles. Has it been 22-years already?

</comment><comment><USER5> I appreciate that they archive their online articles with the original 1993 html.</comment>


Ask HN: Should Amazon get into book publishing business ? - <AUTHOR>

First the war over ebook price with Hachette. And now, the 5 major book publishers not participating in Kindle Unlimited (at least so far). Looking at this, do you think Amazon should get into the book publishing business, much like how Netflix has started producing its own content ? <comment><USER2> Amazon already is in publishing business: [https://www.apub.com/imprints](https://www.apub.com/imprints)</comment>


Hastening an Inevitable - <AUTHOR> http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Hastening-an-Inevitable.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> Back in my old "employee" days, I once did something similar to this. What did I get? A parking spot in the front row for the next month.</comment>


My self-contained Tmux configuration - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gpakosz/.tmux/

<comment><AUTHOR> BTW I've been asked why I don't use resize-pane -Z.

The "maximize any pane to a new window with <prefix>+" feature is different from stock resize-pane -Z as it allows you to further split a maximized pane. Also, you can maximize a pane to a new window, then change window, then go back and the pane is still in maximized state in its own window. You can then minimize a pane by using <prefix>\+ either from the source window or the maximized window.

See it in action: [http://pempek.net/images/original/maximizing-tmux-pane- new-w...](http://pempek.net/images/original/maximizing-tmux-pane-new- window/maximizing-tmux-pane-new-window.gif)

</comment><comment><USER2> On the topic of tmux, has anyone created a nice way to save an active tmux configuration layout?

tmuxinator and the like let you specify the configurations ahead of time, but I want to save an active layout for later use. I haven't found a tool for that yet.

<comment><USER3> I've just published a tmux plugin that let's you save tmux environment and restore it later.

[https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect](https://github.com/tmux- plugins/tmux-resurrect)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> C-a conflicts with bash's move to start of line. Not everyone would care, but that's one of the few bash shortcuts I personally consider important.

I can't stand the default C-b either, it feels like an awkward reach to me and makes tmux seem to require way too much chording.

I've recently switched to using C-j, which duplicates the enter key. I also changed next and prev page from n / p to C-n / C-p. That way I can fly through my tabs with a single press & hold on the Ctrl key. So much nicer.

<comment><USER5> There's always C-\ (I like it because it's opposite ends of the keyboard. Easy to find :)

Might steal C-n and C-P, although C-[ C-] are tempting.

<comment><USER6> Interesting we both came up with C-\ for tmux, I like using C-a and C-b in emacs too much. Plus I forget whatever it does in emacs so it can't be important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A lovely set-up. I may grab a few tidbits for my own. I'm also doing a powerline (airline) inspired bar, but I put mine at the top so I don't get it confused in vim. I really like the maximize/promote to window feature.

Here's my conf for reference: [https://github.com/jamestomasino/dotfiles/blob/master/bash/....](https://github.com/jamestomasino/dotfiles/blob/master/bash/.tmux.conf)

</comment><comment><USER8> The (left,right)_seperators for me are | instead of the cool looking arrows. How do I enable these?

<comment><AUTHOR> after having installed it,

$ cp ~/.tmux/.tmux.conf.local ~/

Then edit `.tmux.conf.local` and uncomment the #tmux_conf_theme=powerline_patched_font line.

For the powerline symbol to work, you need patched fonts: [https://github.com/Lokaltog/powerline- fonts](https://github.com/Lokaltog/powerline-fonts)

<comment><USER8> Ah great, I uncommented the line but I didn't have the fonts installed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unrelated to Tmux, what did you do to get the cool prompt?

<comment><AUTHOR> I explained how I pimped my Bash prompt there: [http://pempek.net/articles/2013/10/27/pretty-elided-shell- pr...](http://pempek.net/articles/2013/10/27/pretty-elided-shell-prompt/)

At the time I didn't know oh-my-zsh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What kind of mouse configurations do you have set?

<comment><AUTHOR> <prefix>m toggles: mode-mouse mouse-resize-pane mouse-select-pane mouse- select-window

see [https://github.com/gpakosz/.tmux/blob/d8b9498d6940b535d3181e...](https://github.com/gpakosz/.tmux/blob/d8b9498d6940b535d3181eddae410a9ace167b0e/.tmux.conf#L277-280)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This looks very cool!</comment>


What Readers Found in Facebook's 'Other' Folder - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/pogue/2013/07/20/what-readers-found-in-facebooks-other-folder/

<comment><USER3> I found a message which read:

Hi Howard,

This is just a friendly follow up from Facebook. A few years ago we had contacted you about positions at Facebook. Your background in web development is of interest to us. Just a quick follow up to see if you may be interested at this time in revisiting opportunities at Facebook? Please email a copy of your latest resume if you are interested and we can go from there. Thanks and hope to hear back from you!

(contact details followed)

The message was sent in April. It wasn't until October that I found it. (I replied but decided that the time wasn't right for me).

</comment><comment><USER4> My favourites are:

\- Facebook Site Governance Facebook has proposed an updated privacy policy. We encourage you to view the proposal and offer your comments at [http://www.facebook.com/fbsitegovernance?v=app_4949752878](http://www.facebook.com/fbsitegovernance?v=app_4949752878) ....

\- Facebook Notice of class settlement Facebook is sending you this notice of a proposed class action settlement that may affect your legal rights as a Facebook member who may have used the Beacon program. This summary notice is being sent to you by Court Order so that you may understand your rights and remedies before the Court considers final approval of the proposed settlement on February 26, 2010.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't rely on Facebook as a communications channel.

If a friend dies and you only found out about via a personal Facebook message, fault your other friends for attending the funeral without you, or stop pretending this person was a valued friend.

Job openings should be emailed to you directly if you're a good fit. If it's via Facebook, it's probably a copy/pasted recruiter message, you're not special.

Mostly, if you're using a service every day, don't complain when you suddenly realize you don't know how it works.

<comment><USER6> If you're using a service every day, and a lot of people don't understand how it works, I'd suggest that's a flaw with the design of the product or its features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sigh. Like others posting here, I checked my other folder. I missed a message from May inviting me to a bachelorette party for a friend getting married in September. It was last month. I know this because I saw the pictures on Facebook and was saddened that I wasn't invited. Now I'm even more sad.

So thanks Facebook. You had one job: to facilitate my connections to people. And you royally screwed up and caused me to miss out on a very special day in a close friend's life that I will never be able to get back.

<comment><USER8> I can't understand this dependency on FB for everything, even among friends and family. I mean, if someone is contacting you _only_ through FB, is it real friendship? It would take 2 mins for her to send you the invite via email - <USER2> she can text, or call.

Sometimes I feel Facebook friends are not real friends.

<comment><USER9> These people are using Facebook with the expectation it works like email. Why do you feel the two are so different? In my experience, the average computer user doesn't like fiddling with email addresses - Facebook is far more friendly (opportunity for a new email client?).

Email is not immune to these issues, either. This scenario is the equivalent to sending an email and having it end up in your friend's spam folder (although arguably Facebook should be more heavily invested in getting this right!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well, this is shitty. I did check my "other folder" a few months ago and found nothing but spam. Decided to scroll down through it.

Turns out that back when I was in high school, five years ago, a girl I had a crush on messaged me her number, address, and asked me if I'm coming to her party.

Well, thanks a lot Facebook. -.-

<comment><USER11> The other folder didn't exist 5 years ago.

<comment><USER10> well then. I missed it anyways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A buddy of mine found a note from one of his wife's friends, telling him that she suspected his wife was cheating on him.

Because it was in the "Other" inbox, he didn't see it until over a year after she sent it, and after he had caught her cheating himself, and divorced her. He could have found out a lot sooner if that note had gone to his normal inbox!

</comment><comment><USER13> This is why I do not rely on Social Media for communication. Give people a call, especially if it is important.

<comment><USER14> And if you're calling me and don't know my mobile - my GV (whitelisted; non- unknown callers route directly to voicemail) is accessible everywhere if you know my name or have received a single email from me (in my .sig).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Conversely, my 'Other' folder is filled with trash from three years ago. Seems to be working as intended for my uses.

</comment><comment><USER16> I found a bunch of missed stuff which made me very angry. Relatives I was out of touch with, old coworkers, events I might have attended, etc.

There's 2 problems at work here. 1) Someone doesn't realize that false positives when it comes to spam filtering are very, very, very bad. 2) Someone else outrageously tried to monetize the fixing of that.

I do like the refunding idea, though. But then, knowing that the other person won't get refunded unless you respond puts too much guilt on you to respond...

</comment><comment><USER17> From the article:

"Several readers wanted to know how they could access the Other folder on their phones or tablets.

The answer: you can't. The Facebook apps don't permit you to see the Other folder. (You can, of course, go to www.facebook.com in your phone or tablet's Web browser — don't use the app — to work on the Other folder there.)"

You can on Android: hit the gear symbol next to the 'Messages' menu option in the Facebook app menu

<comment><USER18> And you can't really on Android using a web browser (I tried in Firefox). The link to the "Other Messages" folder is underneath the message list, which keeps getting longer (endless list style) as you scroll down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I see things like, I try to actually answer the question "why don't they fix this"? Often it's not because the company in question is dumb, but because they're operating within certain design constraints.

Think of the design space here:

Given: 1\. Facebook has close to a billion profiles linked to people's real names. 2\. By default, these profiles are publicly searchable.

You want to design messaging so that: 3\. People can message people they're not friends with. 4\. But you don't want to encourage spammers in any way.

3 & 4 are hard to reconcile. If you have what is essentially a global telephone directory, letting people message anyone is going to lead to horrendous spam. By the sounds of the article, they do some clever filtering to let you know if your message gets through, but it seems they still have to learn towards too-strict filtering. (It's not just viagra and penis enlargement pills - probably most FB spam would be "LIKE our page for the BEST student events in Reno" or "hey girl u look fine u got bf?")

Maybe the pay-a-dollar-and-get-refunded-if-they-reply feature could work, I don't know.

</comment><comment><USER20> To add another story, about a year ago I came across the 'other' folder which contained a message from an intermediary organisation - apparently my birth mother wanted to get in touch.

Maybe a controversial use of Facebook messaging, however wouldn't fault fb for filtering it out of my inbox.

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow, just looked in there and found a message from an old close high school friend's mother. My friend had passed away many years ago and haven't talked to his parents for 20 years. We were best friends at the time and I was very close to his parents. I had no idea that those messages existed.

</comment><comment><USER22> Duuuuuude! Someone found my wallet two months ago and fb messaged me, but it ended up there.

</comment><comment><USER23> I hate the damn paywall.

<comment><USER24> I used my credit card to clear it up :-) But mild snark aside, the meta- question of value vs cost is one that I am really interested in.

The Times implemented a 'some number free' and then paywall feature. For my wife, who only reads an article there when someone points it out to her, she doesn't hit the limit which provokes the paywall. Has that been your experience or are you just reading a number of articles?

<comment><USER25> I only read them when "pointed out to me". Unfortunately for me, many articles on hackernews or reddit that have caught my eye have been from the times. Part of me thinks "Well, I guess that means I would get enough value from purchasing a subscription", and then the rest of me thinks their lowest tier is too expensive, and they should offer some middle of the road "read 25 articles a month before getting paywalled again" option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I recently found this, sent in January...

"Thanks for giving me your details on [INTERNET DATING WEBSITE], sorry is this a bit weird that I am contacting you on Facebook - couldn't find an email address for you. You probably are thinking that I am a bit of a cheapskate, no excuse really just haven't really got round to renewing. How was your new year?"

</comment><comment><USER27> Fuck me! a missed opportunity from 2012 for 2-5 commissioned musical works!

</comment><comment><USER28> Interestingly, my Other folder (which I used when navigating apartment subletting in a new city) is broken. It just "loads" forever.

I have three unread messages in it, too...</comment>


A Scala Corrections Library - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/extempore/a-scala-corrections-library

<comment><USER2> Can somebody explain to me the motivation for all the CanBuildFrom machinery?

Is the goal solely to avoid having to explicitly state the type of the target collection? It seems to me that assuming the output collection is likely to be of the same type as the input collection is... frankly... wrong.

Clojure's approach makes a lot more sense to me: Coerce to lazy sequences & chain together O(N) operations by operating on sequences, then require explicit reconstitution of the target type. Using something like (into #{} (f (g (h #{:some :set :items})))) manages to 1) avoid stating the target type (by using an empty set literal) 2) support processing into an existing non-empty collections and 3) avoid the overhead of re-constructing more complex data structures for intermediate steps (at the cost of lazy sequence construction), 4) is trivially extensible to new target types (implement conj) and 5) plays nice with fast transient object construction (implement transient, persistent!, and conj!). Then with reducers and monoidal operations, you can switch from sequential algorithms to parallel algorithms without paying the lazy sequence cost.

Scala's model buys me what exactly? I don't have to write (vec ...) or (into (my-data-structure) ...) or whatever? Seems a steep complexity price to pay for such a trivial and questionable feature.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> > Is the goal solely to avoid having to explicitly state the type of the > target collection?

Pretty much.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1722726/is-the- scala-2-8-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1722726/is-the- scala-2-8-collections-library-a-case-of-the-longest-suicide-note-in-hist)</comment></comment>


Google Paid This Man $100 Million - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Google-Paid-This-Man-100-Million-Here-s-His-4414507.php <comment><USER2> Reading this, his compensation is the least amazing part. If this article is true, it should have been titled "A Story Of Competence". Does anyone have any doubt the guy is generating Google this money many times over? It's simple math. It has nothing to do with curing cancer, economical equality or anything else. He's something that's worth X and pays back many X.

I can understand why this comes as a shock to some; it may be difficult to accept that another person doing his 9-5 job can bring so much value to a company. I always suspected such value creators exist (Jobs would be one).

So good for him for delivering, and good for Google for acknowledging and compensating accordingly. And good for me too; I'm taking my first steps as an advertiser with Google and I'm really liking what I'm finding so far.

<comment><USER3> People sometimes find it difficult to understand that some people are actually worth the astronomical figures they are paid. When we hear about the big pay day it's easy to focus on that number what not what was done to earn it.

<comment><USER2> True, and it's way easier to accept how someone is a successful businessman or a stakeholder in a company, than it is to accept that someone may be actually producing this kind of value on a personal level. It's easy to imagine how some trader did some wheeling and dealing for a quick buck or how someone with shrewd instincts made a profitable investment, but it's very difficult to imagine how someone creates all this value by himself, day in day out; how someone stands out like this in an organization like Google, which is both an intellectual powerhouse and far removed from the compensation culture in the finance sector - this is even more difficult to accept.

Maybe that's why people pick on CEO salaries but stay silent on the shareholder profits from the very same corporations. You can imagine 100 million dollars of oil barrels or real estate, but you can't imagine a 100 million dollars mind.

<comment><USER3> It really is a hard concept to grasp. It's one thing to have grand plans for a business. It's another thing entirely to be able to communicate those plans effectively to all of the people who will be needed to make sure the plan is properly executed. People who can do this successfully deserve everything they are given in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a classic story of really good negotiation.

Getting the very serious offer from Twitter was the best thing to happen to Neal.

I can only imagine the negotiation with Google that he must of had. It probably went on the lines of something like this -

"Hey, I really love it here at Google. I am really excited with what we are working on and want to deliver it but this Twitter offer is just something that I can't ignore. I am looking at the financial future of my family and I would be doing them a disservice if I don't consider this offer seriously. Is there anything we can do to just make this offer go away."

Neal had the upper hand. Worst-case scenario for him would be that there would be no change. He would continue to work at Google. Next best case scenario would be that he would be working at another mega-tech company, and getting better compensated with potentially even greater upside.

Google was in a position of weakness in either case. If they did nothing and he left, it would amount to even more collateral damage as others would get the message that Google can't compete and Twitter would make even more offers to others.

By paying him out, they basically paid him the opportunity cost in real dollars that he may have had if he moved to Twitter.

In all of this, Neal's professionalism would have tipped the favor on his side.

<comment><USER5> Serious question: does the sweetened language, how you couch the situation really make a difference to decision makers?

<comment><USER6> I think when you start talking about the financial future of your family, it makes more sense when you're a line employee. But when you're on a salary well into the six figures, it sounds disinegenuous (to me) to say "we're struggling here". By all means go for "hey, I'm in demand and thinking of moving - business is business", but "I'm moving because I'm concerned about my personal finances"?

But then again, I'm not the guy who does salary negotiations...

<comment><USER7> At the level being discussed here, I don't think it's a question of avoiding struggle, but rather of ensuring your family's wealth for generations to come. It would be difficult to turn down such an offer, especially if the work would still be interesting.

<comment><USER5> then there is [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1986/...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1986/09/29/68098/index.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find this fascinating. It almost smacks of game theory. A land-mined game of incentives, anyway.

Think of the sheer amount of considerations that go into a decision like this. Higher-ups at Google must acknowledge:

* Offering someone an enormous sum only _after_ someone else has made you an offer can be off-putting. Consider the many articles written about never making counter offers[1], or never accepting them.

* Along the same lines, if you're not offered a large enough sum to stay, you might take it as an insult. "They're only offering me this much money _after_ I've considered leaving?" Google certainly made sure the sum was large enough, by any count.

* Offering an enormous sum to one person may tempt others to fish out offers from other companies. Others may feel like they're never going to get a raise unless they are courting or being courted actively.

* Google's decision-makers (or check-writers) have to be careful about the number picked. They want to send a message to the person, and to other companies, and to the market. But they probably don't want to end up paying $100m for _every_ high value employee. Luckily for Google, if its gonna be a cash arms-race against other companies, there are few that can do serious battle with them.

* Speaking of high value employees, while you might get _person A_ to stay, you make make resentful _group B._ After all, there's already a comment here: "It's only a matter of time before us little developers get's similar packages!" It's not a stretch for anyone to sympathize with that view.

<comment>

And then, at the end of all that, people in a room pursed their lips together and quietly nodded while somebody pulled out the (metaphorical) checkbook. This guy is staying, it's going to be this much money, and we're going to make it purposefully public knowledge. Signals everywhere.

It seems to be a dangerous game. Others may (as a default) suddenly feel unappreciated since Google hasn't made them an offer to keep being a Googler, and perhaps hasn't approached them with any considerable raise in some time. 100 million ensures that you keep a single employee, but how many do you alienate at the same time?

Hard to blame Google's decision, I'm sure they gave it much more thought than I have. I wish I could know what they're thinking, it's just so fascinating what goes into this.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3549384>

<comment><USER9> Google is safe offering him $100M without offending the other employees, because the other employees at that level at Google already earn that much, if not more.

Giving him $100M was more of a correction because he arrived at the company later than the other equiv execs. Most of the top tiers of employees at Google, which is where he would be, are worth hundreds or millions and more through vested stock, new options, bonuses, etc.

<comment><USER10> I find that very hard to believe. I'm ok with the talk about hackers being 10x more productive than regular developers. But a $100m bonus would mean that guy is about 1000 times more valuable than the average. It defies common sense in every way. And it's not just because I'm jealous and resentful I'm thinking that, no ones time is that valuable.

<comment><USER11> A person making decisions that may lose $100 million or make a $100 million profit can be thought as "1000 times more productive", because large losses/profit depend on his actions.

Of course the average software engineer at Google can't make similar decisions, so they can't be worth that much even in theory (unless they happen to invent something revolutionary).

So my point is that yes, CEOs can be "worth" thousands of times the salaries of the average employee, but that's not fundamentally about the skills of the CEO, but because the CEO happens to be in a position where his choices/strategy/etc have extremely large consequences. (In this example Mohan is not CEO though, but makes similar choices that a CEO does).

A real world example would be Stephen Elop at Nokia: some say that he has made Nokia lose billions of dollars, when another CEO might have made Nokia save that money.

<comment><USER12> Why stop at $100M? A company worth $250B could justify $50B salaries following this argument. And the same exact argument can justify outrageous salaries for traders who gamble huge amount of money that's not theirs. Yes, large losses/profits depend on their actions but it's unclear how much of that depends on their skills. A lot has to do with chance or market dynamics that nobody really grasps. And if they win, they win big bonuses, but if they lose, at worst they lose their job.

For traders, Daniel Kahneman has shown that they have no skills whatsoever (see [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the- ha...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-of- confidence.html)). I do believe that CEOs have some skills but the expected value of these skills is much lower than the potential impact of their decisions. Having been a company owner, I have learned that how CEO decisions are executed (by all the other people in the company who don't make outrageous salaries) is often much more important than the decisions themselves.

<comment><USER13> That seems to say that stock pickers and fund advisors have no skills, not very much about professional traders. whatsoever. I've read some stuff that said that the military has studied pit traders at NYMEX due to their skill in handling vast amounts of information and making split second decisions on it.

<comment><USER12> You are right. I used "traders" a bit too vaguely. Kanheman's research applied more to stock pickers and wealth advisors. But I think the argument applies to all: none of these people's skills justify the 8 or 9 figure bonuses that Wall Street has been distributing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow. Definitely, an interesting reading. And a special guy, no question about it. On the other hand, the guy didn't cure cancer. Doesn't it give anyone pause to thin that the topic of conversation is 'ads'? You know, those little annoying things you would never click, and which get in the way of your normal life.

I mean we're talking about billions of dollars. So much human talent, skill, intelligence taken away from really important things... Just sad...

<comment><USER15> Ads are also the thing that enables really amazing things to exist. Regardless of your feelings about facebook, the community it has created has had drastic impacts on the world at large. Almost the entire knowledge of humanity is now in anyone's grasp with a simple click of a button (Google). That was only possible because Google was able to make money off of it through ads. How do you propose that the internet pay for its self without ads? The whole freedom of the internet is because they can make money off of ads.

Not everyone needs to cure cancer to do something great.

<comment><USER16> What's deeply ironic is the modern internet is bankrolled by brand trademark monopolies, but programmed by a bunch of people who complain about government- granted monopolies...

There's a quote from the 1950's from a judge very skeptical of extending trademark law to the effect of "we shouldn't allow building brands too much, because then people will buy things for reasons other than product quality and that'll undermine competition in the marketplace by making products non- fungible."

I personally like monopolies,[1] so it's cool with me, but you have to wonder what the internet would look like if Adidas sold shoes and not "footwear experiences."

[1] There is no profit in perfectly competitive industries, and thus no money to do cool stuff. That's why, e.g., Microsoft is so screwed. It keeps hoping for innovation out of companies like Acer, Lenovo, Asus, etc, that have profit margins of just a few %.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Original source for the article, with better formatting: [http://www.businessinsider.com/neal-mohan- googles-100-millio...](http://www.businessinsider.com/neal-mohan- googles-100-million-man-2013-4)

<comment><USER18> A study showed that links from Business Insider stand an extremely low chance of getting upvotes on HN ( [http://blog.rjmetrics.com/surprising-hacker-news- data-analys...](http://blog.rjmetrics.com/surprising-hacker-news-data- analysis/) ). That's why people post other websites' syndications of BI.

<comment><USER9> which is a shame, because BI has been really good recently - to the point that I visit the site each day

that said, I do enjoy the irony of a BI original article being syndicated by another publisher and becoming more popular than the original source

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a job for life and then some.

If you compare this with full professorship (academic tenure), that will cost the university about $4 million (assuming $60k/yr - probably $6-7 million if the university is upper echelon). So conservatively this is 10-15x what tenure is.

Neal Mohan sounds like the business equivalent of Jeff Dean [1]

[1] <http://research.google.com/people/jeff/>

<comment><USER20> Ahem. This is 10-15x the _money_ portion of tenure. You still have to think about advertising all day every day. I'd take the tenure.

<comment><USER21> I am completely naive to what you just said, may you please explain like I am five? [I am dead serious]

<comment><USER22> I think the GP is saying that a tenured professor typically has the _option_ of a wide range of job freedom. You work on pretty much what you want and when you want. The GP is contrasting this with being the head of advertising at Google, which one might guess is fairly demanding.

<comment><USER23> Also, improving advertising isn't generally seen as having the highest positive impact on society, whereas a professor might contribute to a cure for cancer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone know if these types of $100M numbers are actually true? I think it makes a great headline but wouldn't everyone at senior ranks get packages like this making it unsustainable?

<comment><USER25> It does seem likely that some tricks were involved to arrive at a sensational number.

But if Google pays an average engineer on the order of $100,000 , this is 1000 times the average annual salary as a one time bonus.

That seems exceptional, certainly, but not completely insane.

On the flip side, it might keep a certain type of engineer for bolting for a startup. Even the most optimistic entrepreneur knows the odds of a $100 M payday are pretty much non-existent.

<comment><USER26> Google pays a starting engineer fresh out of college that much salary, and then there is stock and bonus incentive compensation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The article mentions an "epic 400-500 page Powerpoint document" outlining Mohan's strategies.

In the rare chance that this is floating around the internet, does anyone know where it would be or more information on it?

<comment><USER28> Sounds like the kind of document that the distribution of would be tightly controlled. It was probably shown to select people, but not actually emailed to anyone. You get to see the slides, but you don't get a copy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's only a matter of time before us little developers get's similar packages!

<comment><USER30> Not really. I have been curious on what kind of compensation Paul Buchheit obtained for his creation of gmail and adsense, the former being the one of the two GOOG services I depend on daily, the latter built the empire financially. I am pretty sure that that amount could be far lower than $100M, which is a very depressive fact for our programmers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It makes sense ... the guy is running a multi-billion dollar new business line for Google that is their most meaningful business outside of search ads.

</comment><comment><USER32> The article makes a point to say that he started with a job that paid a "humble" $60,000 per year in 1997. Based on my quick and dirty run on wolfram alpha, that is the equivalent to $120,000 per year today. Not so much of a humble beginning for a second job out of college.

<comment><USER25> What? That can't possibly be right.

BLS says it's more like $86k

[http://data.bls.gov/cgi- bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=60000&year1...](http://data.bls.gov/cgi- bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=60000&year1=1997&year2=2013)

<comment><USER33> Was just about to post that exact link. Still not too shabby.

<comment><USER25> Not bad, but I was making the same in 97 with about the same experience level, in Atlanta. It wasn't an exceptional salary in any way.

<comment><USER34> It's not exactly a completely humble beginning either, though. You may be out of touch with what salaries look like for the average American.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> _They say Mohan is the visionary who predicted how brand advertising would fund the Internet, turned this vision into a plan, and then executed it._

Some say 'fund', others might say 'destroy'. What's in a word?

</comment><comment><USER36> Google's purchase of DoubleClick seems to be considered a huge success. I'm curious how the $750M purchase of AdMob is seen in the company. Does anybody have an insight or references?

</comment><comment><USER37> "They'd spent the months prior trying to turn Twitter into "a real company" after years of neglectful management."

Anyone care to explain how the management was neglectful? Serious question.

<comment><USER38> I think it might have to do with the founder, jack dorsey, staying on as CEO, though he was eventually ousted out of that role

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This happened at a time when Google was bleeding top management talent to Facebook and Twitter. [http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/google-said-to-have- high-le...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/google-said-to-have-high-level- mole-at-twitter-makes-massive-counteroffers-to-retain-employees/)

Sundar Pichai was also offered $50M. As things have settled down, I doubt if this would happen again, at least anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER40> Note to self: Become an executive.

<comment><USER41> *Become indispensable in a role where you are directly responsible for driving billions of dollars in revenue.

<comment><USER40> Step 1: Become an executive

<comment><USER41> Step 1 is to be really fucking good at your job, whatever that job is. Ideally that job would be in a unit that is directly responsible for driving revenue growth. That will probably lead to you becoming an executive at some point, but that would be a symptom of your success, a necessary evil, not the starting point.

Especially in a company like Google, which has a cultural disdain for empty suits, if your goal is to "become an executive" you'd never find yourself in his position.

<comment><USER40> I've been really good at my job, and never became an executive. I think there's more to it than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've always been curious what display advertising is and how it generates so much revenue for Google. Are there any good resources to learn more about what exactly goes on behind the scenes? Do those little ads on my gmail sidebar really create billions in wealth? Or is there some super secret illuminati- esque subliminal advertising going on?

<comment><USER43> <http://www.google.com/ads/displaynetwork/>

It's distinguished from search-based advertising (e.g. adwords). It's basically just ordinary online advertising, and there are a great many different ad networks out there already. However, google's network has been gaining a huge amount of traction recently and took the top spot in marketshare within the last year or so, even pulling ahead of Facebook. In total these sorts of ads are worth around $2 billion a year in revenue for google but both the size of the market and google's share of it are growing at double digit rates so google's revenue from it is likely to double within the next few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm thinking either this story is entirely sensationalized, or Google are scared that this guy will take his roadmap and go execute it elsewhere. Like he has seen upcoming trends and Google know they have to be first to act on them. I wonder what they could be...

</comment><comment><USER45> Wonder how it worked out...

Did he hand in his resignation and was asked to reconsider? Did he tell them he wanted more money? Did they find out about the twitter offer from outside sources and arrange for the bump?

How did the semantics play out?!

</comment><comment><USER46> According to story, he did use Powerpoint. It is bothering me.

</comment><comment><USER47> You know what? Fuck that.

Nothing against this guy. If it were $1 million, or $3 million, I probably wouldn't bat an eye.

A _hundred_ million for a non-technical executive would be OK, _if_ engineers had basic autonomy and open allocation. Then (and only then) they'd _actually be able to afford_ (morally speaking) a $100M payout to a non-technical executive.

Don't call yourself a technical company if engineers in the $100k-200k range _can't even fucking change projects_ until 18 months in (and often not even then, due to a corrupt performance review system) but you're running a private welfare system for non-tech executives.

I know all about Hanlon's Razor ("never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence") but somewhere around the 5-standard-deviation incompetence level I go back to malice because 5-sigma is just awful rare. Paying a non-tech executive $100M while engineers making < 1% of that struggle to get a decent project is 8, 9 sigma at the least.

Choke on a fucking taint, Google. Choke. On. A. Taint.

(Or just implement basic autonomy/open allocation for _all_ engineers. Then we're cool no matter what you pay your execs.)

<comment><USER48> Regarding epen allocation. What if only 2 engineers are needed and 100 are interested ?

<comment><USER49> To use an anecdote from just this morning, if you Google the terms, "google tasks android," you'll see that the inverse may also be true: Google engineers able and interested to work on something that is a no-op for mysterious reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Does anyone remember when DoubleClick was the most hated company on the Internet? Spying on users, displaying obnoxious ads? The Evil that Google was to Not Be?</comment>


vLine acquired by Airtime - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vline.com/post/143878881303/vline-has-joined-airtime <comment><USER2> ICMYI, Airtime relaunched. ([http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/21/airtime/](http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/21/airtime/))

And died immediately (#86 in Social Networking and dropping) as video chatting/streaming is no longer a unique value proposition.

This is likely a cheap acquihire of a company facing the same dilemma.

<comment><USER3> Airtime employee here:

You aren't wrong about the appstore ranking but it is definitely still a bit early to call the app "dead". The Social Networking category is a crowded one with lots of competition but I think we have some interesting value between our in app features and our video technology. This is the only app I've ever used where I've been able to have multiparty video chat on a sketchy 3g/4g connection and it actually worked well.

Give it a try and see what you think! :)

<comment><USER2> "Interesting value" doesn't work in a market with very adequate substitutes.</comment></comment></comment>


Full stack web development with ASP.NET Core 3.0 and Blazor - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7LAbdoNBJA <comment><USER2> There's an even newer video from the latest NDC Conference with Steve Sanderson: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW- Kk7Qpv5U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW-Kk7Qpv5U)</comment>


Show HN: Computing made easy - From a visual spec sheet to a simple interface - <AUTHOR> http://moblivu.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Any feedback will be greatly appreciated. We are talking as much information possible for the BetaOne!</comment>


How to do AB Testing using Google Website Optimizer - <AUTHOR> http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/blog/post/How-to-do-AB-Testing-using-Google-Website-Optimizer.aspx

<comment><USER2> Having just used GWO for a project because it was a requirement (GWO is integrated with Shopify), I can now much more enthusiastically endorse Visual Website Optimizer.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, I take that as a compliment :)

<comment><USER2> You should! VWO rocks pretty hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The video states A/B testing doesn't help you find the global maximum, which I agree with.

So how do you go about finding the global maximum? Using A/B testing you could create some variations that are 'wild' to hope to get lucky but it is not very efficient. What else can you do?

<comment><USER5> I thought that part of the video was bullshit. I thought the same when Atwood wrote his "Groundhog Day" piece, which the video seems to accept at face value.

A/B testing lets you test two competing hypotheses. It does not in any way require that the two hypotheses be very similar to each other. You can test radically different designs against each other just as easily as you can test minor differences.

So, the real question you are asking is: how do you generate new hypotheses? And the answer is: the same way as always. You can see what other are doing. You can think "out of the box." You can use your best judgment, and whatever creativity you have access to.</comment></comment>


The Security Behind the Birth of Zcash - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/the-crazy-security-behind-the-birth-of-zcash <comment><USER2> Obligatory link to Peter Todd's experience of participating in this ceremony (for lack of a better word) — as a skeptic, no less — which is an excellent read for the opsec alone: [https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus- zcash-trust...](https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash- trusted-setup-ceremony)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing, really fascinating :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The developers don't need to steal. They're making money from early mining. Here's ZCash right now, down about 99% from the initial price.[1] The market cap keeps rising as the price falls, indicating it is being mined way too fast for the market.

[1] [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/zcash/](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/zcash/)

<comment><USER5> Agree with the analysis, puzzles me why the currency doesn't balance the cost of mining in a way that doesn't significantly devalue existing holdings. It would be interesting to see an estimate of the cost to mine the coins at the rate they're being mined. If the cost is more than the face value of the coin, seems like something funny is going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> >> "The number of people who really understand zk-SNARKs, and therefore the Zcash protocol, is probably small enough that you could feed them all with one Thanksgiving turkey."

If the list is so small, who are they?

<comment><USER6> More importantly, where are they having this turkey?

In all seriousness though, if I were one of a handlful of people who understood a rising anonymous currency platform, I wouldn't want to be publicly exposed that way.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, even though a couple popular cryptographers have vouched, it's still not the classic definition of peer-reviewed for something that ground- breaking.

That aside, the MPC (Multi-Party Computation) setup is more of a security theater than actual security. It completely goes against of what cryptography is all about and I'm puzzled as to why any cryptographer would base their system's security in such a way.

<comment><USER8> It actually is the classic definition of peer reviewed! The paper on Zerocash (renamed Zcash) was published at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy:

[http://zerocash-project.org/media/pdf/zerocash- oakland2014.p...](http://zerocash-project.org/media/pdf/zerocash- oakland2014.pdf)

It's a peer-reviewed conference and basically the top venue (along with Usenix Security and ACM CCS) for academic computer security.

I'm not sure what you mean by "for something that ground-breaking"?

<comment><USER9> Oakland is more of a systems security conference, so peer review here speaks more to the architectural thinking, and says little about the deeper math. Same thing for Usenix. I'd want to see somewhere like Crypto/EuroCrypt, or maybe IACR, to call it peer reviewed. Even then, it may pass largely on novelty & prestige.

(For background, I used to publish at this conference and others, did my share of paper reviewing, and my colleagues were working on e-cash crypto around the time of bitcoin's rise.)

<comment><USER10> zkSNARKS, the underlying tricky bit of crypto that Zerocash uses to make anonymous transactions, existed before Zerocash/Zcash. There is a bunch of work on them that was published in Eurocrypt/Crypto/TCC etc. For example [0] at Eurocrypt and [1] at Crypto. Page 37 of that last paper [2] has a summary of work on the subject, though it is now dated as the paper is from 2013.

SNARKs have gotten the appropriate peer review from the right parts of academia. To everyone else reading this: Of course, that doesn't make it secure and there are limmits to peer review. Just because 3 to 5 reviewers read the paper and thought it was publishable doesn't mean it's correct. However, those works were high enough profile that others have looked at the papers once they were published, which is the real meaningful part of peer review and that comes after publication.

None the less, snarks are one of the more sophisticated cryptogrphic techniques ever deployed. And peer review also says abosultely nothing about the security of the implimentations of software instantiating the cryptography. But the only way to remidy that is to build software, deploy it, and get people to look at it.

Zerocash itself is a fairly simple protocol built on top of SNARKs, so the fact that it was published at Oakland isn't the biggest worry. It's also gotten a bunch of scrutiny after that.

[0] [http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-38348-9_3...](http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-38348-9_37) [1] [http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-40084-1_6...](http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-40084-1_6#page-1) [2] [https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/507.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/507.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do you guys know of a decent overview website for all these new hipster currencies?

But I mean a realistic one, including info such as: \- how much it has been pre-mined. \- why is it being pushed ( research, corp goals, etc) \- limits (does one need a GPU to use it or can it execute on a CPU)

I know of few places that have lists, but I get the impression that people start currencies lately as a shot at getting rich if they take off, and not from a realistic need to do so.

<comment><USER12> Zcash is materially different than Bitcoin, so it at least isn't any more hipster than Bitcoin itself.

 _Unlike Bitcoin, Zcash transactions can be shielded to hide the sender, recipient, and value of all transactions on the blockchain._

[https://z.cash/](https://z.cash/)

<comment><USER13> It uses completely unproven cryptography that may quite possibly be horribly broken. If you have a better definition of "hipster" than "use something for the sake of it, regardless of practicality" I'd love to hear it.

<comment><USER12> Oh, I will continue to own $0 in Zcash, but trying to provide actual confidential transactions isn't "for the sake of it, regardless of practicality", there is a clear motivation.

<comment><USER13> No, it is. Those already exist in the form of Monero. Using some new-fangled, likely broken cryptography, is very hipster.

<comment><AUTHOR> IMHO the biggest privacy-breaking problem of Monero is that it leaks the transaction amounts, while Zcash does not. Monero also has other inconvenients compared to Zcash: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/41vg68/monero_vs_zc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/41vg68/monero_vs_zcash_eli5_fundamental_differences/cz5ge90/)

So you can't claim Monero already solved all the problems that Zcash is trying to solve.

<comment><USER13> That's incorrect, Monero does not leak amounts since they created and added RingCT (currently compulsory on testnet, and compulsory on mainnet from a hard fork next year September) - [https://lab.getmonero.org/pubs/MRL-0005.pdf](https://lab.getmonero.org/pubs/MRL-0005.pdf)

Not only does Monero already do what ZCash is trying to do, but it has two main advantages:

1\. EVERY transaction is private, which means that the entropy of the anonymityset is continuously growing. Instead, ZCash restricts privacy to an opt-in mechanism (mostly due to private transactions being horrible - requiring north of 8gb of RAM and several minutes on a modern computer) which means that there is a trivial amount of entropy, and deanonymization is pretty trivial.

2\. Monero is focusing on further improvements that ZCash is just dreaming about, such as their C++ i2p router, Kovri. They can do this because they've been in production, tested, and hammered for several years.

The real question is: what does ZCash provide that Monero doesn't, except some sort of ridiculous "star cred"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Monero doesn't already do what Zcash is doing. As you point out yourself, it will be "next year September" that RingCT will be live.

I agree with your other criticism of Zcash though. The situation is far from perfect.

<comment><USER13> No, it'll be MANDATORY from next year September, not LIVE from next year September...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [http://zerocash-project.org/media/pdf/zerocash- extended-2014...](http://zerocash-project.org/media/pdf/zerocash- extended-20140518.pdf)</comment>


Moonrim II: The Revolutionary Ergonomic Keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://moonrim.io/ <comment><USER2> I appreciate that this is a flippant comment, but the still grab from the YouTube video made me chortle - it shows a few lines of garbled text which pseudo-confirmed my immediate thoughts about the unit - "but I can't see what I'm doing?"

.

This might be great for certain 3d computer games..</comment>


No more Ads on StatSheet - <AUTHOR> http://statsheet.com/blog/no-more-ads

<comment><USER2> I think sponsors and plugs for your subscription service make sense. Maybe dial down the free content a little and beef up the subscription content to encourage people to sign up (and pay) for your premium services.

One warning about sponsors, though: Sometimes the sponsors may expect more than a simple display ad for their money -- they'll want "rich media", special ad units, or interaction with your audience that may end up being more irritating than Google AdSense.

Another suggestion: If you haven't already done so, set up an email newsletter or alert system based on interesting stats, user-determined criteria, or sudden spikes. That could be one of your premium services.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interested in any other perspectives on this.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like ads didn't work for you. That doesn't mean they don't work for any other startups though.

>> "Let's face it, no one likes to see ads on websites."

Let's agree to disagree instead :) I do, lots of people do. They wouldn't click if they didn't find them useful. If they don't click, you're doing it wrong.

>> "There is a sad truth to web advertising. Unless you are 1) willing to put a half dozen ad units on every page and 2) serving tens of millions of page views per month, advertising will not help that much when it comes to paying a startup's bills (even a lean startup like StatSheet)."

This is also not a "truth". It completely depends on your sector/niche, and how you arrange the ads. I run a freestuff/competition site that made 4 figures a month from advertising and doesn't even register on alexa/quantcast/compete. It's traffic is tiny - but it's the monetizable type of traffic.

I'm not trying to say you made a bad decision here, just that your experience isn't something others should take in isolation when deciding on revenue streams.

I can't remember the US stance on online betting/gambling, but that would be my choice of revenue. The affiliate commission for gambling/betting sites is really good. Like a large payment for each new customer, and often a revenue share for future losses. You'd only need a handful of referrals to pay server costs etc.

For example, Paddypower (betting site): Sale: 20.00% - 25.00% GBP, £11.00 GBP signup. 3 month EPC=£196.02 Yup, that's £196 ad revenue per hundred clicks on average. (Stats from cj.com)

>> "Here are a few recent articles and videos about how advertising is losing favor in the startup world:"

I know it's popular to go with the 'hype', but often it's better to go against it. There's more money to be made than ever from online advertising.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Let's agree to disagree instead :) I do, lots of people do. > They wouldn't > click if they didn't find them useful. If > they don't click, you're doing > it wrong.

You are saying people like seeing ads?? They click on them because they are in front them, not because they necessarily like seeing them. Fundamentally, I believe ads hurt the overall user experience. You are saying it helps? Or keeps it on par with a non-ad experience? Guess we would have to disagree with that.

> This is also not a "truth". It completely depends on > your sector/niche, > and how you arrange the ads. I run a > freestuff/competition site that made > 4 figures a month > from advertising and doesn't even register on > > alexa/quantcast/compete. It's traffic is tiny - but it's > the monetizable > type of traffic.

You actually just agreed with my point, but I think we differ on scale. I'm looking for more than 4 figures / month and not willing to put ads all over the site to get "just" that.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I like seeing relevant useful information, which ads are when presented correctly.

>> "They click on them because they are in front them, not because they necessarily like seeing them."

You really credit your users with that much intelligence eh? That given a link, they'll click it?

This is _not_ the formula:

* Create something * slap on adsense * profit!

It's about seeing where advertising may be useful for the user. For example, say you had a 'betting odds' page showing some stats on what odds are available, it'd make obvious sense to have some sponsored links to betting sites if the user wants to place a bet. That is a net win for the user, you, and the betting site - look at expedia etc. Advertising done right is useful for all parties. Done wrong, it's useless for all parties.

4 figures a month from negligible traffic was my point. Larger sites are obviously making a lot more. Scaling with advertising is easy enough if you can grow the traffic.

I'm not arguing with your reasons, I'm just saying to others, don't believe _every_ startups experience of advertising is the same.

<comment><USER4> Offtopic, But I would like to know your views about monetizing a site oriented towards tech crowd. Many such sites find monetizing difficult because apparently the more tech savy you are the less you click on ads.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook wants your children's mind - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/facebook/2017/12/06/facebook-already-won-the-war-for-your-mind-now-it-wants-your-children <comment><USER2> Jeez I quit Facebook like 6 years ago and never looked back. What's the real need here? Old buddies you barely know of? Let them go.

Just drop FB, it's not that important, and 70% of people are clearly (by reading all the "I quit Facebook drama posts") over attached to it.

<comment><USER3> It is a red flag to not have social media

<comment><USER4> I'd never hire someone who has a facebook account.

<comment><USER5> While I don't agree with the parent comment, this seems a bit extreme.

<comment><USER3> I'm not saying I treat it as a red flag. I'm saying there are people that do. For better or worse.

<comment><USER4> That was also my intent. Don't go create a fb account to be employable, now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I dislike Zuckerberg more and more everyday. What a piece of work that guy is, hiding the reality of FB behind his self-righteous mission of connecting the world while selling you to advertisers and fragmenting your attention and happiness potential.

<comment><USER7> I hardly think he's hiding it. He's just succeeded in creating a product so addictive that people are willing to sacrifice a _lot_ in order to use it.

<comment><USER8> Indeed, he doesn't really hide it; as his famous quote goes, "They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks."

<comment><USER6> True, I just meant that he doesn't really acknowledge the harm that it does. Oh well, at least people are becoming more aware of it.

<comment><USER9> I guess it's sort of like a fast-food restaurant owner telling the customers that the food isn't healthy. What's the point? Everyone probably already knows that, and they'll eat it anyway (for various reasons).

Facebook (and other social media sites) is like the digital version of a fast- food restaurant. And luckily for them they have 2 billion users eating it, so there is a lot of peer pressure on others who'd rather not eat to go there anyway because their friends are there.

<comment><USER10> I guess a drug dealer also can justify their line of work by saying that they are merely providing the means for a customer to obtain something that they like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Part of me thinks the the anti-Facebook media sentiment is because Facebook replaced newspapers/magazines as the highly profitable media aggregator. Old media struggles for relevance and lashes out at Facebook, the new winner.

Facebook makes fantastic communications tool and gives them away for a whopping $0. I love staying aware of what's going on with my grandparents, old classmates, friends, and family, AND not having to directly pay money for this.

I would love to hear other perspectives.

EDIT: Downvote away, but my point is that people pick on Facebook for privacy concerns but we all know it's an advertising company (probably the best the world has ever seen). It also operates the best communications tools the world has ever seen and it doesn't get enough credit for that. In 2006, the News Feed was publicly bemoaned because of privacy issues and it's now the core product. Facebook has built great tools over time, even when people didn't initially agree. Not trying to incite anger, just pushing toward a debate.

<comment> brian-armstrong This post is akin to calling Malboro 'the greatest supplements company ever created' in 1970

<comment><USER11> You're implying that Facebook is addictive and, yeah, that seems to be the case. Good point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What if

we declared Facebook to be a monopoly and broke it up like we did Ma Bell in the 70s?

I dunno. Feels like it's too big, too ubiquitous, and is too much oriented towards encouraging behaviors that are much better for their pockets than for anyone using it.

Hell, look at this story: Facebook already has (according to a quick google search, [citation needed]) about 58% of the US' entire adult population, or 3/4 of all adult Americans who use the Internet. (which is about 81%). Their user growth rate is going flat, because they're running out of people _willing_ and _able_ to be online. But they need to keep acquiring new users no matter what, so now they're turning their eyes to the people who they are legally barred from giving accounts to.

Gotta find more eyeballs to show ads to.

<comment><USER13> An interesting idea, which raises a lot of questions:

Along which lines could it be broken up? Datacenters? Subsets of the social graph? Would you liked to be grouped with your family, your school or your church?

It seems very plausible that one of them would grow and engulf everyone, while the others woulg go the way of MySpace. What then?

<comment><USER14> > Along which lines could it be broken up? Datacenters? Subsets of the social > graph? Would you liked to be grouped with your family, your school or your > church?

> It seems very plausible that one of them would grow and engulf everyone, > while the others woul[d] go the way of MySpace. What then?

I've thought about this, and I think the best way to break up Facebook is by datacenter, staff, AND social graph. However, each successor company needs to be required to _inter-operate with the others and everyone else_ through some open standard. That would blunt the network effect and perhaps allow a decentralized, competitive market to stabilize.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article speaks of using powerful algorithms and AI to scour Facebook's dark corners of pedophilia, terrorism, suicide, etc. This led me to a somewhat scary conclusion. Taking the following premises:

* Community management, AI, and algorithms in general will eventually be powerful enough to do completely eradicate anything considering double plus ungood by Facebook.

* Life on Facebook is a slice of human social life, although admittedly poorly curated.

* Sensor and mobile technology will before long be good enough to have a full annotated and indexed high definition 3D recording of every person's existence at all moments.

With these taken together, it's not hard to imagine a Facebook that becomes the perfect law enforcer and social control mechanism far beyond anything thought up by Orwell or Demolition Man, definitely leaning more toward the Matrix.

<comment><USER16> Worst still AI will be used to eliminate any activity which is unprofitable for the parent entity. Imagine reddit shadowbanning users who hurt ad revenue, imagine telecoms throttling users based on network activity (oh wait), etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> All advertising is (intended to be) mind control. It wants to get you to take an action you weren't previously inclined to take.

It follows that any product that's successful at controlling people can sell that control.

If you consider the implications of Facebook-as-mass-mind-control, then Russian election-meddling, viral suicides, and all of Facebook's other facets make a lot of sense.

It also makes sense that Facebook wants to get better at controlling you by learning more about what motivates you, leveraging social pressure, and taking over more of your attention.

(That said, I still enjoy and use Facebook. I'm just worried about how powerful it is.)

<comment><USER17> > All advertising is (intended to be) mind control. It wants to get you to > take an action you weren't previously inclined to take.

That is one reason for advertising, but not the only one. Advertising is also meant to simply notify people of the existence of a certain product. In that sense, it isn't supposed to force people to buy something they don't need, but it is supposed to make them choose advertised brand, once they need such product.

<comment><USER7> In your example, it's still modifying behavior to produce a specific result. It also introduces thoughts that may arise subconsciously, like thinking "Kleenex" when my nose is running.

That fits the definition of "mind control", as I was using it. Your definition might differ from mine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Facebook has a big advantage over other ways to keep in contact with your social circles: it's not full of people constantly talking about how they have quit Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER19> From their point of view why wouldn't they, children become eyeballs, sorry adults with money to spend.

I've given up expecting corporations to be nice, I haven't quite given up on expecting them to obey the law, the bits they haven't written themselves anyway.

<comment><USER20> The sole purpose of existence of a corporation is to make money, and it would be strange to expect them to be nice and not use every opportunity for profit. Thus, enforcing ethics is a consumer responsibility: if you believe that something is bad, don't use it.

<comment><USER21> The sole purpose of getting a job is to make money and yet we expect our fellow citizens to have stronger morals than just greed.

<comment><USER22> People get lots of different jobs for lots of different reasons, some of which include money. I think your fellow citizens deserve a stronger consideration for their morals, choices, and concerns than that of a faceless, sociopathic megacorp like Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The advertisement on TV is heavily regulated, I hope we'll get the same thing on the internet before it's too late and a whole generation has lost its attention capacity.

Governments have a huge work to do in order to analyze what could be harmful and what is ok, and pass law about it.

<comment><USER23> A company like Facebook need massive regulations. They are a pandoras box in my opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> As a parent and someone who has always found social media unpalatable, I think this isn't new or specific just to FB. The competition to control your children's mind begins early and never stops when it comes to any institutionalized power mechanism, that's how power is reinforced and retained over generations.

This is just another thing you'll need to teach your children about as you do your best to ready them for the world and help them become independent thinkers.

</comment><comment><USER25> Don't trust facebook. There are so many reasons to not use it, but this imho is the greatest.

Of all the productive and happy people I have known, none use facebook.

Of all the miserable and lost people I know, most of them do.

</comment><comment><USER26> Zuck:

> My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really > young age.

According to Wikipedia, Zuck has two children. Let's see their public profiles!

<comment><USER27> _His_ philosophy? That's a well-known fact to anyone working in education and child development. What irony that his products are actually _hijacking_ those crucial early years; lower attention span, need for instant gratification, potentially unsafe materials, device reliance, overstimulation ... seriously this is cruel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> NRK (Norways largest media corp) har a great story yesterday about the how the highly addictive snapstreaks feature in Snapchat are controlling teen's lives:

[https://www.nrk.no/slukt-av-snap-1.13811834](https://www.nrk.no/slukt-av- snap-1.13811834)

<comment><USER29> I've been lurking HN for months now, just created an account to thank you for sharing this link! Google Translate worked well enough. The presentation of this article was really interesting. Despite being a teenager myself, I'm glad I don't use any (non-anon) social networks. This is really scary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Every big fat corporation yearning for even more growth wants your child's mind.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have to call what they're doing "the open garden" model. They simply want to be as much of the online context of peoples' lives as possible. It's really no different than the closed garden, except that people do more online now and what would have previously gone to LiveJournal and Flickr and any number of separate sites now all goes into FB, raising the switching costs to the level of closed gardens. It can't take more than a year or two of MBA to be able to fall back on this strategy. Beats working for a living.

</comment><comment><USER32> My question after reading all the comments here is, is there any alternative? or is there really a choice?

If I have to build a social networking site, say - FriendBook, what features would you like in it?

So is the case with WhatsApp.

Privacy, if not now, will be unsustainable part of business model later. Look at Apple Ping[0].

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping)

<comment><USER33> Why do you presume an alternative is even needed? We did fine before facebook (some would argue better) and we will do fine after it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> didn't children already move to something else? Amazon and Google also wants your children...</comment>


Show HN: Manifestew - A markdown editor for writing your personal manifesto - <AUTHOR> http://manifestew.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Please feel free to give me feedback. I made it as a tool for keeping track of my own manifesto and thought there might be some use outside of my own needs.

<comment><USER2> One more thing. Change the name. Change it to: "WhenYouAreGreat.com"

Trust me on this one. Then resubmit to HN. There is massive potential here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, any particular reason for the name change?

Thanks for the feedback though, look forward to hearing your thoughts/questions

<comment><USER2> I think this tagline will explain it:

 _Manifestos of Future Leaders - Like You_

Again, lots of potential here if you play your cards right.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, I like the tagline quite a bit. Fits with the concept quite well: Make sure you stay true to what you set out to do even after you've made it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Badger vs. RocksDB - <AUTHOR> https://blog.dgraph.io/post/badger-over-rocksdb-in-dgraph/ <comment><USER2> > Badger provides better performance than RocksDB, both in terms of reads and > writes.

It's not that simple. It's never that simple.

These are incredibly complex pieces of software designed as generic solutions to a thousand different problems on dozens of platforms. For some combinations of platform+problem these KV stores will do great. But it would be terribly naive to assume it will work in every situation. I can guarantee there are workloads that RocksDB will do better with.

When badger was first released I was pretty skeptical of it... it seemed to be quite buggy, and I tinkered with swapping out our metrics database MDBM-based implementation (yeah that ancient yahoo KV store no one talks about), but it didn't turn out to be a good fit for the use case. It wasn't even in the same ballpark performance-wise. But I hoped that maybe in a few years it would mature.

This puff piece isn't changing my opinion of it...

The RocksDB folks seem to be a lot more honest about the realities of tuning KV stores: [https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki/RocksDB-Tuning- Guid...](https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki/RocksDB-Tuning-Guide)

> Unfortunately, configuring RocksDB optimally is not trivial. Even we as > RocksDB developers don't fully understand the effect of each configuration > change. If you want to fully optimize RocksDB for your workload, we > recommend experiments and benchmarking, while keeping an eye on the three > amplification factors. Also, please don't hesitate to ask us for help on the > RocksDB Developer's Discussion Group.

<comment><USER3> >> Badger provides better performance than RocksDB, both in terms of reads and writes.

> It's not that simple. It's never that simple.

Yeah. The post that is linked[0] within that quote has a "Benchmarks" section, but it looks like they're either 100% reads or 100% writes. Most real workloads aren't like that.

[0] [https://blog.dgraph.io/post/badger/#benchmarks](https://blog.dgraph.io/post/badger/#benchmarks)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The two points I wanted to know about their differences:

> Badger is different from other LSM tree based DBs in that it colocates only > small values or pointers along with these keys, storing the values > separately in a value log.

> we decided to cut out RocksDB and Cgo entirely from our code base and write > a fast key-value database purely in Go</comment>


Prime Minister claims laws of mathematics 'do not apply' in Australia - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/malcolm-turnbull-prime-minister-laws-of-mathematics-do-not-apply-australia-encryption-l-a7842946.html <comment><USER2> Sensational headlines like this completely miss the point of the constructive conversation that should be taking place around crypto. The fact is that old school politicians simply do not understand these things, and think that it's something that can still be legislated away as things were in the past. That's an information issue, not a political issue.

He went on to say

>"They can't just wash their hands of it and say it's got nothing to do with them.""

And he's right. Tech companies have an obligation to figure out a balance of privacy and public safety that works for everyone, not just stonewalling governments with complete noncompliance and then wondering why politicians become adversarial.

<comment><USER3> The conversation was being had: this is the politicians ending it.

They've consulted with security experts, who said it would be universally bad for encryption.

They've consulted with economists, who said it would be a dangerous idea that could have unintended effects.

They consulted with sociologists, who said that history shows that this power will be abused.

They consulted with lawyers, who said that this kind of law cannot currently be made safe for the populace.

After all this consultation with the right people in the right fields... They've decided that the handful of dangerous individuals who may make use of this technology, without hard evidence that they actually do, make the risks worthwhile. In direct contradiction to those they consulted.

What conversation is left to be had?

<comment><USER4> I have no idea what Turnbull's game is, but his late-to-the-party argument is flawed.

People want encryption to work properly, not 'sorta, kinda'. The internet is plagued by enough security flaws and threats, we don't need more.

In the event he gets his back door or weak encryption by law, there's nothing stopping criminals from using systems that aren't part of the "broken encryption gang".

There's no conversation left to be had. There is only comics...

[https://xkcd.com/538/](https://xkcd.com/538/)</comment></comment></comment>


RTB (Request to build): Crowd sourced explainer - <AUTHOR>

A website that lets people submit simpler explanations to complex concepts / objects. They can submit breakdowns, metaphors, what does it do's, diagrams, and videos. Everbody votes up or down the best simplifications.
Applicable to complex scientific/academic stuff down to explaining web tech like Node.js or beanstalk or processes like map/reduce.
Let us know if any of you fine hackers will take this idea and run with it. <comment><USER2> Doesn't the simple English Wikipedia to an extent solve this problem?

<http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>

<comment><AUTHOR> in the same way that directories already solved the search engine problem? :)</comment></comment>


Testfire of homebuilt rocket (same guy who built his own submarine) [video] - <AUTHOR> http://ing.dk/artikel/92534

<comment><USER2> Here's the place where they hang out with submarines, art projects, electronics and stuff that explodes ignites or burns: <http://www.halfmachine.dk>

</comment><comment><USER2> Oh, and this is their official page: <http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/></comment>


X-ray pulses with gigawatt peak power from a free-electron laser - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-019-0549-5 <comment><USER2> It's worth noting that gigawatt peak power in an ultrafast laser is not special, but that gigawatt peak power _in the x-ray_ region is special.

In larger wavelangths (i.e. visible or near-IR), you can get this level of peak power from commercial laser systems (e.g. [https://www.spectra- physics.com/products/ultrafast-lasers/sp...](https://www.spectra- physics.com/products/ultrafast-lasers/spitfire- ace?cat=scientific&subcat=amplifiers))

<comment><USER3> IIRC one of the main problems of EUV litography is generation of beams with sufficiently high power. EUV is not X-ray but very close to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://sci-hub.tw/10.1038/s41566-019-0549-5](https://sci- hub.tw/10.1038/s41566-019-0549-5)

</comment><comment><USER5> Power of each pulse is tiny. 100GW times a attosecond is 10^11 * 10 ^ -18, or 0.1 microwatt. I wonder how much power they have to put in to get that.

 _" Since the scheme developed in this work is based solely on a passive modulator, our technique is easily scalable to MHz repetition rates, which are envisioned for the next generation of XFELs"_

Now that's interesting. This is not only a soft X-ray generator, it's a soft X-ray _beam_ generator. Could this be used as a light source for extreme ultraviolet (i.e. soft X-rays) wafer fabs?

The "light source" used now for the newer 7nm and down wafer fabs is a horrible kludge the size of a house. It works by zapping a falling droplet of molten tin with optical lasers to produce a plasma. This produces X-rays more or less omnidirectionally, and some tiny, tiny fraction of them eventually get bounced through the mask and onto the wafer. It's amazing that it's worth the trouble, and it makes fabs billion dollar projects.

Comments from anyone in the fab side of the world?

<comment><USER6> Your units don't add up: W = J/s -> W*s = J. What you calculated was 10^(-7) J, not W.

<comment><USER7> Fortunately, the paper calculates pulse power:

>The median pulse energy is 10 μJ at 905 eV and 25μJ at 570 eV. However, due to the intrinsic fluctuations of SASE XFELs we observe pulses well above the mean value (up to 250μJ for 570 eV, corresponding to a peak power in the hundreds of gigawatts).

The only power consumption number in the paper is an aside that notes the magnetic chicane in the electron beamline is spiked at 10 kiloamps. (At how many volts? How much power does the rest of the laser consume?) Free-electron lasers are many things, but efficient isn't one of them.</comment></comment></comment>


An architectural historian's take on Trump's condemnation of modernism - <AUTHOR> http://bostonreview.net/arts-society-politics/anthony-paletta-trumps-culture-wars-come-architecture <comment><USER2> Up with brutalism!!!!

<comment><AUTHOR> the only good style</comment></comment>